Xbox series X vs well specced PC

Xbox series X vs well specced PC

Author
Discussion

vonuber

17,868 posts

166 months

Tuesday 6th July 2021
quotequote all
PC's are only obsolete if you want to be at the very, very top end of gaming all the time. You can easily manage changing a few parts every 4 years or so and still be relatively at the top end towards mid rang by the end of the cycle as you go along.

Of cousre,t hat's more expensive than a console, but you stay closer to the top end over a life ccuyle - and consoles are starting to do mid cycle upgrades as well (PS4 Pro etc) which is no different.

deckster

9,630 posts

256 months

Wednesday 7th July 2021
quotequote all
Welshbeef said:
No I mean is that the best possible screen (bar 8k) for gaming and Xbox series x or have I missed something.
No such thing as "best". It's probably "very good" but even if it is "best" for your personal subjective needs, it will only be that until the new "best" comes along in a couple of months time.

Narcisus

8,081 posts

281 months

Wednesday 7th July 2021
quotequote all
vonuber said:
PC's are only obsolete if you want to be at the very, very top end of gaming all the time. You can easily manage changing a few parts every 4 years or so and still be relatively at the top end towards mid rang by the end of the cycle as you go along.

Of cousre,t hat's more expensive than a console, but you stay closer to the top end over a life ccuyle - and consoles are starting to do mid cycle upgrades as well (PS4 Pro etc) which is no different.
My last machine lasted 10 years with a midlife GPU upgrade to a 970.... It was still running well at 1080.

Lucas Ayde

3,567 posts

169 months

Wednesday 7th July 2021
quotequote all
Narcisus said:
All this maybe true but I have a half decent PC and would still rather lie on the sofa and play on the Xbox on my TV...... Yeah the graphics maybe a bit better on the PC but from the distance I would never tell.
You can lie on the sofa and play PC games on your TV via Steam Link or Moonlight/Gamestream.

It's exactly as if you were playing on a console - the game runs on the PC and streams to your Smart TV/media box. You can use a console joypad as pretty much every PC game that has a console release also supports a joypad control scheme.

Of course you can still play games in 'traditional' PC style sitting at a desk with keyboard/mouse if that's what you want. Also, with an Oculus Quest 2 you can run PCVR wirelessly to it and benefit from top-end VR gaming too.

It's the best of all worlds. Only drawback is that the hardware to play the games on to PS5/Xbox Series X level is going to cost well above £450 if you are buying/building an all-new system. On the other hand once you have an existing system you can expand it piecemeal as you choose to improve its performance and keep it up to date. It's a hobby in and of itself - something which you could view as a plus or minus point I suppose.

Balancing out the higher hardware cost is much lower cost of games. Between things like Steam sales and digital stores reselling keys, gaming on a PC is dirt cheap unless you simply must have the latest and greatest the moment it comes out. Plus you can buy games knowing that you will be able to run them on future more powerful hardware - something that is hit and miss with consoles - as well as buy almost any older PC game ever and still run it on your modern hardware.

Aside from that, a PC isn't just a gaming platform. You can do all sorts of other stuff from web browsing through multimedia creation, coding, learning about IT (handy for job prospects) etc.

Narcisus

8,081 posts

281 months

Wednesday 7th July 2021
quotequote all
Lucas Ayde said:
Narcisus said:
All this maybe true but I have a half decent PC and would still rather lie on the sofa and play on the Xbox on my TV...... Yeah the graphics maybe a bit better on the PC but from the distance I would never tell.
You can lie on the sofa and play PC games on your TV via Steam Link or Moonlight/Gamestream.

It's exactly as if you were playing on a console - the game runs on the PC and streams to your Smart TV/media box. You can use a console joypad as pretty much every PC game that has a console release also supports a joypad control scheme.

Of course you can still play games in 'traditional' PC style sitting at a desk with keyboard/mouse if that's what you want. Also, with an Oculus Quest 2 you can run PCVR wirelessly to it and benefit from top-end VR gaming too.

It's the best of all worlds. Only drawback is that the hardware to play the games on to PS5/Xbox Series X level is going to cost well above £450 if you are buying/building an all-new system. On the other hand once you have an existing system you can expand it piecemeal as you choose to improve its performance and keep it up to date. It's a hobby in and of itself - something which you could view as a plus or minus point I suppose.

Balancing out the higher hardware cost is much lower cost of games. Between things like Steam sales and digital stores reselling keys, gaming on a PC is dirt cheap unless you simply must have the latest and greatest the moment it comes out. Plus you can buy games knowing that you will be able to run them on future more powerful hardware - something that is hit and miss with consoles - as well as buy almost any older PC game ever and still run it on your modern hardware.

Aside from that, a PC isn't just a gaming platform. You can do all sorts of other stuff from web browsing through multimedia creation, coding, learning about IT (handy for job prospects) etc.
Well all I can say is I porbably spent just short of 4k on my new build in October 2019 but I still prefer to use my Xbox for gaming ( apart from Flight Sims ) dont get me wrong I use my PC for all kinds of other stuff but.... I just prefer the console ....

Squirrelofwoe

3,184 posts

177 months

Thursday 8th July 2021
quotequote all
vonuber said:
PC's are only obsolete if you want to be at the very, very top end of gaming all the time. You can easily manage changing a few parts every 4 years or so and still be relatively at the top end towards mid rang by the end of the cycle as you go along.

Of cousre,t hat's more expensive than a console, but you stay closer to the top end over a life cycle - and consoles are starting to do mid cycle upgrades as well (PS4 Pro etc) which is no different.
This with bells on.

I've been a PC gamer for years and I've never dropped £1,500 on a PC, that's car buying money! yikes

I have upgraded different components as needed to keep my gaming experience somewhere just above mid-range (currently 60-100fps at 1440p which in my opinion is the sweet spot for value/performance PC gaming).

E.g. years ago went for a 2nd hand R9 280x OC card for just over a third of the price of a new 290x when the latter were pretty much top of the AMD tree. At the resolution etc I was playing at it gave me 90% of the performance for about 35% of the cost.

That card saw me all the way through until early last year when I found a great deal on a 5700xt for £250 (just before card prices started going silly) which I'm expecting to get another good few years out of. My old R9 280x still works fine but was starting to struggle to keep up with newer games.

My motherboard and FX-8350 cpu I got back in 2013 so they are now getting a bit long in the tooth but it works well enough with the new 5700xt card to keep me over 60fps at 1440p resolution in most things so I'm happy to wait until a good deal pops up on a new CPU and motherboard combo. It will be the most I'll have spent in one go in getting on for a decade but given the components they will replace are 8 years old I can live with that.

My case is still the same one I bought 2nd hand back in 2007, my power supply is coming up to 8 years old but was well over-spec'd for what I needed so it's lived an easy life, my SSD I brought on a Black Friday sale 7 years ago and works perfectly, my 1Tb HDD was another Black Friday deal and is 9 years old and still going strong.

Staying at the absolute top of the performance ladder with PC gaming is bloody expensive. Keeping a few rungs down costs a fraction of that, particularly if you're happy to take advantage of deals when they arise and use the second hand market for certain components.

The 2 big things for me are only buying components when a decent deal/offer crops up, and only upgrading components when there is a significant performance benefit to doing so. It probably also helps that I'm tight and that I generally resent having to spend money upgrading my PC, unlike others who see it as a hobby in itself! hehe

We do also have plenty of (older) consoles in the house as there are games that we enjoy that either aren't available on PC or just work better on a console sat on the sofa. Likewise there are games that just don't work as well or aren't available on consoles - i.e. real-time strategy games, simulations etc. But again we tend to buy the previous gen consoles when the next one has just come out so they tend to be cheap as chips.

Lucas Ayde

3,567 posts

169 months

Friday 9th July 2021
quotequote all
Narcisus said:
Well all I can say is I porbably spent just short of 4k on my new build in October 2019 but I still prefer to use my Xbox for gaming ( apart from Flight Sims ) dont get me wrong I use my PC for all kinds of other stuff but.... I just prefer the console ....
Have you tried using Steamlink or Moonlight to a smart TV/media box? The sofa gaming experience is the same as a console.

james_TW

16,287 posts

198 months

Friday 9th July 2021
quotequote all
What about the option of getting a lower spec PC for school, buying the Xbox and "remotely" connecting to the xbox using the app over your local network? It's something I do at the moment and it seems to work pretty well...

J4CKO

41,637 posts

201 months

Friday 9th July 2021
quotequote all
Welshbeef said:
J4CKO said:
Welshbeef said:
How does the Xbox series x work with the LG OLED G1 screen? Is this the best screen and gaming console setup?
Plug the HDMI cable in, that usually does the trick.
Haha

No I mean is that the best possible screen (bar 8k) for gaming and Xbox series x or have I missed something.
I have got a normal 65 inch Samsung LED, nothing fancy and it looks fantastic to me.

Though, decided another few inches would be of benefit and have ordered a 75 inch Samsung QLED one.


TameRacingDriver

18,094 posts

273 months

Sunday 11th July 2021
quotequote all
Lucas Ayde said:
Have you tried using Steamlink or Moonlight to a smart TV/media box? The sofa gaming experience is the same as a console.
Not in my experience, it does have a slight lag and is susceptible to network lags / drop outs. It's also even more fannying about.